Many Tickifieds users are surprised to learn that roughly 85% of our traffic comes from the search engines (primarily Google). As such, it is extremely important to optimize your ticket ads for these search engines while maintaining usefulness to the prospective ticket buyer. In this article we will fill you in on how we do SEO for Free Ticket Classifieds and provide some tips on how to best take advantage of the work we already do for you.

One of the main reasons for our high rankings in the search engines is how we promote each ticket ad placed on our site. When a user submits a ticket ad, the ad is syndicated to various blogs and social media outlets via our RSS Feeds. The syndication of these ads ensures that the search engines notice and quickly index these ads and include them in their respective search results. The individual ranking of each ad in the search engines depends on many things (e.g. the competitiveness of the keywords, when the ad is posted, etc.). However, the ranking of each ad is largely dictated by the uniqueness of the ad. The more unique the ad is, the more likely it is to be syndicated by other sources- search engines recognize this and rank ads higher that have more backlinks and have generated more buzz.

Now that you have an idea on why our ads rank so well in the search engines, what can you do to maximize the power of Tickifieds? Well, it’s very simple- create unique ads! The 3 most important areas to focus your creative juices on are the Ad Title, Description, and Keywords. Ad Title is probably the most difficult to be unique with as there are only so many ways to creatively list, “Duke vs Michigan State Basketball Tickets”. If the particular event is not extremely popular or you only plan on listing 1 ad for the event, you probably do not need to worry much about it. However, if the event is popular and you plan on listing multiple sets of tickets for this event, then you want to ensure each ad you post has a unique title. So, for the above example, try some of the following:

Duke vs Michigan State Basketball Tickets

Duke vs Michigan State Basketball Tickets 12/1

Duke Basketball Tickets 12/1

Michigan State @ Duke Basketball Tickets

Michigan State @ Duke Basketball Tickets 12/1

Cheap Duke vs Michigan State Tickets

Discount Duke vs Michigan State Tickets

For Sale: Duke vs Michigan State Tickets

Buy Cheap Duke – Michigan State Tickets 12/1

Hopefully, by now, you see the point. You can easily create unique titles by including or excluding additional information and also by rearranging them. Remember, duplicate title are not only bad SEO but also against our Terms of Use.

In addition to mixing up the titles you should also always include a unique description of the tickets listed for sale. All too often we see people simply copying and pasting the generic ticket listing information with a link to their website at the bottom like the below example.

Get tickets to the BIG Michigan State Spartan at Duke Blue Devils Basketball Tickets game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Durham, North Carolina – Wednesday, December 1, 2010 9:30PM. These are nice seats in section 11 row P. See the top 2 teams in the Nation battle it our for that elusive #1 ranking!! This is a game not to be missed!

In the second example you can clearly see the additional information creates a much more unique ad that adds value not only in the eyes of the search engines but also the customer.

Finally as icing on the cake, you need to make sure your ad keywords are also unique. Add as many of the details from your unique title and unique description to further make your ad stand out from the rest. If you included “Cheap” or “Discount” in your title and/or description, add it to your keywords as well.

Last, and certainly not least, it’s important to keep in mind that as unique as you can make each ad following these simple tips, you can never avoid repeating keywords. That is why we recommend never posting more than a few ads for a particular performance or event consecutively. Even if you are posting 1 ad for each Duke Blue Devils basketball game you still would be repeating the “Duke Blue Devils” keyword 30+ times. This only serves to dilute the importance of that keyword and the search engines and syndication sites will begin to think your ads are spam. Often times this can result in your ads not being indexed and thus not ranking high in the search results.